Perfect Poison

by M. William Phelps

  “They were patty-caking him,” Murphy later recalled. “So I slapped a question on him, and everybody’s hair stood up on the back of their necks.”

  Murphy, slamming his hand down on the table, looked directly into Glenn’s eyes, and said, “Cut the bullshit! Is what you’re telling us is that she tried to kill you? We need to know that stuff. You can’t be holding onto to this.”

  Because of the countless murder investigations Murphy had been involved in, he knew people held on to things. “At some point in time,” Murphy recalled later, “I am going to feel that you’re full of shit. After I do, watch out.”

  As Plante spoke to Glenn in the kitchen, Murphy worked his way through the pantry. Tucked in back of a bunch of sewing material on the second to the last shelf, inside a satchel of some sort, Murphy located a book.

  The Handbook of Poisoning was a five-hundred-page textbook dealing with the poisonous properties of various medications—including epinephrine. It also contained rather extensive narratives detailing all the different types of poisons, “the specific dosage necessary to be lethal, the symptoms of a lethal dose, and the recommended treatment for a lethal dose.”

  “Sweetheart,” Murphy called out to Plante, who was still talking to Glenn, “can you come in here for a minute?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Take a look at this.”

  Upon further examination, they could tell right away that the book, because of the stamp inside the front cover, had been taken from the ICU of the VAMC.

  “I have never seen that before,” Glenn said. Then explained that they had a separate area in their home, inside the bedroom, designated for child-rearing books, medical texts, and medical dictionaries. The bookcase had been placed in their room, Glenn explained, for easy access in case of an emergency.

  Murphy opened up the book and began turning pages.

  “Look at this,” he whispered to Plante, who was standing over his shoulder.

  Several pages in the book were dog-eared—in particular, pages explaining the drugs ketamine and cyanide, a poison “that is undetectable post-embalming,” one of the more popular poisons chosen by killers.

  “Perhaps it’s time Dr. Baden began exhuming those bodies?” Murphy said, looking at Plante.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Kristen was furious when she found out that Glenn had permitted Plante and Murphy to search the house. She told Perrault Glenn was “weak.” Belittling him, she added, “Glenn’s an idiot. He’s stupid! What a pushover for allowing them to go into the house.”

  Besides Glenn’s willingness to start cooperating with Plante and Murphy, however, Gilbert now had a bigger problem on her hands: How was she going to explain the book?

  “What kind of book is it?” Perrault asked.

  “It deals with poisons,” Gilbert said. “I’m concerned, Jim. They might draw conclusions as to why I had the book.”

  Then she changed her story.

  “But I’m not really sure exactly what book they’re referring to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Then she changed her story again.

  “It was in a bag of linens,” she said. “Yes! That’s it. Melodie [Turner] brought over a bag of linens one time, Jim. I bet it was in that bag.”

  A few days later, yet another story emerged.

  “I recall taking the book from Ward C so I could look up poisonous plants we had in the house.”

  But Glenn was, at the same time, telling Plante and Murphy that, because they had a cat, they never brought poisonous plants into the house.

  “Cats like to chew on plants, so we never wanted the plants around,” Glenn later recalled.

  Gilbert’s reaction to whatever piece of incriminating evidence had been found was becoming almost as predictable as her lies, and on August 19, 1996, she wasn’t about to change her pattern.

  After she called a friend and complained that she had, again, taken an overdose of Fiorinal, she was found “unresponsive” on the floor of her apartment by that same friend.

  Paramedics showed up and inserted a “#18 catheter into her left wrist” to try to revive her.

  But she didn’t respond.

  Quickly getting her into the back of their ambulance, paramedics found her to be in a state of “somnolence.” She was in and out, sleepy and drunken.

  Realizing Gilbert was likely suffering from an overdose, one of the paramedics began to insert a tube down her throat so she could breathe.

  As he brought his finger close to her mouth, Gilbert bit it and abruptly sat up.

  “I do not need to be intubated!” she shrieked. “And don’t think about lavaging [pumping] my stomach . . . it’s been way too long since I ingested those pills.”

  Shocked, the paramedics just looked at each other.

  Now, inside the ER, the on-call doctor noted that upon admission, Gilbert was “very lethargic, although apparently less lethargic than she was acting. She was initially completely unresponsive. . . .”

  When asked why she took the pills in the first place, Gilbert indicated that she never intended to kill herself.

  Doctors at Cooley Dickinson soon recommended that she be transferred to Arbour Hospital for further observation and treatment.

  The following day, August 20, Gilbert found herself in the psychiatric ward of Arbour Hospital for the third time within a month.

  In what had become a struggle to try to fool the doctors who were treating her, Gilbert denied any attempt at suicide.

  “I am well aware that the lethal amount [of Fiorinal is] higher,” Gilbert told the doctor.

  The attending psychiatrist wrote, “[Kristen Gilbert] has a tendency to respond to any question that was asked and, according to the direction that she sees from you, she has a tendency of going back and correcting her response.”

  In other words, she kept changing her story to cover the lies she was telling.

  CHAPTER 48

  Perrault was forced, in many ways, to make two important decisions that would forever change the murder investigation that had centered around the woman he, at one time, was madly in love with: First, it was time to tell Gilbert how actively involved he had become over the past few weeks in the government’s case against her. Second, even though they had reconciled weeks ago and things were seemingly okay between them, the relationship had to be terminated.

  There was just too much going on.

  These weren’t easy decisions for the Persian Gulf War vet to make. He knew Gilbert well enough to know that once she found out he had been providing investigators with information behind her back, she would likely go berserk.

  So, late in the day on September 9, Perrault picked up the phone and explained he would be meeting with Assistant US Attorney Bill Welch the following day to discuss the government’s investigation into the “high number of suspicious deaths” at the VAMC, adding that the meeting was likely a follow-up to his grand jury testimony back on July 16.

  “Don’t go, Jim . . . please don’t go,” Gilbert begged.

  Perrault was firm.

  It’s over. Period.

  “The entire investigation is your fault!” Gilbert raged, her voice husky and forceful. “Please don’t go to that meeting, Jim.”

  Perrault showed little reaction. Surely, some things were his fault. He wasn’t denying that. But this was totally out of hand now.

  In desperation, Gilbert started crying.

  “I can’t understand why they’re trying to do this to me,” she said, reminding him of the theory she had been trumpeting since day one: that John Wall, Kathy Rix and Renee Walsh were setting her up.

  “Why don’t you leave the area . . . get away from this town?” Perrault suggested. “It’ll probably do you some good.”

  “No! I want everybody here to see that they’re ruining my life.”

  On the morning of September 10, Perrault walked out of his Easthampton apartment a confused—yet determined—man. He wa
s meeting with Joe Riggs, his attorney, and Bill Welch, in Springfield, at nine A.M, and there wasn’t a damn thing Gilbert, or anybody else, could do to stop him.

  When Perrault came out his door, he looked to the left and saw Gilbert’s car parked up the street.

  But he decided to ignore her.

  Almost immediately, however, she pulled up and parked directly in back of him, preventing him from moving his car.

  After a moment, she jumped out of her car and ran up to his window.

  “Talk to me.”

  “What are you doing?” Perrault said, starting his car.

  “Don’t, Jim. Let’s talk about this,” Gilbert pleaded. She started whimpering. Begging. “Don’t go. Please don’t go. Do you have to go, Jimmy?”

  “I’m going, Kris. Now get out of my way.”

  It wasn’t that Perrault hadn’t expected Gilbert to try something foolish, but it still incensed him that she would take it this far.

  “I’m not letting you go,” Gilbert said, becoming more serious in tone. “I’m not moving my car!”

  Perrault bowed his head over the steering wheel and just sat there for a moment. He didn’t want trouble. He didn’t even really want to go. But there was no way he was going to let Gilbert prevent him from meeting his obligations.

  So he laid on the horn.

  “I’ll keep it up,” he said over the noise, “until one of my neighbors calls the cops.”

  Begging Perrault not to speak with the attorneys about a murder investigation was one thing, but blocking his car on the day he was scheduled to meet with them, in the eyes of the law, was obstruction of justice. Gilbert could be arrested. Thrown in jail. How would that look? If she wasn’t guilty of anything, why was she trying so desperately to impede the investigation?

  As Perrault continued to lay on his horn, Gilbert jumped into her car and took off.

  The parking garage for the Federal Building in downtown Springfield is a narrow and dark maze of concrete tucked in the back of the building, standing in the shadows of I-91. Across the street, underneath the Tower Square Mall, is a second garage that handles the overflow.

  Guards sit in tiny wooden kiosks and take money as people exit the parking garages. Although there is a government building attached to the garage and security is tight inside the building itself, both garages are public parking areas and have little security.

  Perrault’s head was spinning as he walked to his car following his meeting at the US Attorney’s Office. The only good thing about the meeting was that it was finally over.

  Walking alone in the dark recesses of the parking garage, Perrault was mortified by the thought of Gilbert’s being responsible for what the investigators and, now, Bill Welch were saying. At the very least, they had ample evidence to warrant a grand jury investigation. That alone was frightening enough.

  When Perrault finally reached his car, he found the right front tire flat. It wasn’t sliced or cut; someone had let the air out of it.

  So he walked around to the trunk, grabbed the spare, and proceeded to change the tire. While leaning over, he kept turning around, thinking Gilbert was, at any time, going to come screeching around the corner and run him down.

  Within hours of being home, it was obvious that the tire incident was the start of something more sinister.

  Later that night, Perrault found his vehicle covered with eggs. The following day, someone spray-painted the windshield with a high-gloss, black paint. If that weren’t bad enough, both fenders had been keyed.

  One morning not long after that, while he was sitting in a class he had been taking at Holyoke Community College, staring out the window, he saw a car identical to Gilbert’s 1993 Olds pull into the parking lot and begin slowly circling around all the other cars. He thought about getting up and running out to see if it was, indeed, Gilbert, but decided against it. It just wasn’t worth the hassle of yet another face-off.

  After class, when he made it to his car, he saw that someone had demolished the license plates, twisting and turning them into corkscrews of metal.

  The day after that, the phone calls started at his apartment—and never stopped.

  During some, Gilbert would say she was sick and bedridden. She needed him to come over and care for her. He would, of course, refuse. After he failed to show up, she would call and hang up, sometimes three, four, five times a day.

  Several days after the license plate event, Perrault confronted Gilbert. “I saw you pull into the parking lot.”

  “Yes. That was me. But I didn’t do anything to your car.”

  When Perrault couldn’t take any more of her lies and prank phone calls, he decided to get the Easthampton Police Department involved. By this time, around the second week of September, he was getting no fewer than five hang-ups a day. And if he wasn’t home, his answering machine would record one call after the next of heavy breathing. The Easthampton Police put a trace and trap on his phone, and, as he expected, the prankster turned out to be Gilbert.

  Further, there wasn’t a person involved in the murder investigation, save for law enforcement, who hadn’t had some type of vandalism done to his or her car throughout the summer of 1996. It was no secret who the culprit was, but no one could catch Gilbert in the act.

  Many wondered now, however, how far would she take her threats? By this point, Gilbert had no one left. She was alone.

  CHAPTER 49

  By the middle of September, Samantha Harris had come to the horrifying conclusion that her next door neighbor was, possibly, a cold-blooded serial killer.

  As she sat one day in her living room and put all she had seen throughout the summer into perspective, Harris became almost embarrassed by her naivety. How could she have been so blind? She remembered how Glenn had shown up after work one day and Kristen had attacked him in front of the kids, screaming obscenities.

  What kind of mother would subject her kids to such animosity and bring them into the middle of a divorce?

  It made more sense to Harris now.

  A few days later, Glenn again came by to pick up the kids, and Kristen told him Brian hadn’t been feeling well.

  “He’s had a headache all day,” Kristen said. “I want to give him some medicine before you take him home, Glenn—”

  “Absolutely not,” Glenn snapped. “Don’t give him anything! I’ll take care of them myself.”

  A fight ensued. Kristen, clawing and kicking, went after Glenn while Harris huddled the kids together in the corner of the kitchen.

  After a few moments, Harris calmed Kristen down enough so Glenn could gather the kids and leave. It was one of the last times Kristen had taken care of the children.

  There were other times when Kristen would tease the children right before Glenn arrived. She would take things from them and taunt them. Gilbert’s youngest was two years old at the time. Like Linus from “Charlie Brown,” the boy had a favorite blue blanket he carried around with him. Harris couldn’t believe it as she watched Kristen rip the blanket from his hands one afternoon, and, as he begged to have it back, she refused.

  It was as if she were punishing the children because their father was talking to the investigators, Harris thought later.

  By September, Harris was at her wit’s end. Gilbert’s behavior had become so unpredictable it was a crap shoot every day as to whom she would be. Harris had given her the benefit of the doubt throughout the summer. She still believed in Gilbert’s innocence. She felt the system had been using Gilbert as a scapegoat, forcing its theory down the throats of her family, friends and coworkers until they agreed to believe it.

  But here it was, the second week of September, and things were anything but normal. As Harris recalled different episodes throughout the past few months, she became convinced of Gilbert’s guilt. As it was, Gilbert had been phoning Harris three and four times a day and stopping by unannounced whenever she had a chance. Now, Harris realized, the entire time Gilbert had been pumping her with misinformation—things she wanted only H
arris to know.

  As Harris began to put things together and discuss them with not only Perrault, but Gilbert’s other friends and coworkers, she realized Gilbert had been playing her all along.

  Three specific episodes stuck out in Harris’s mind, chewing at the fabric of her perception enough to force her to go running to the Northampton DA’s office seeking help.

  First, there was the matter of a canoe Gilbert had given to Perrault for his twenty-sixth birthday back in May.

  It seemed like an innocent gesture from a lonely woman in love. At that time, Harris was just getting to know Gilbert and Perrault. “Wow,” she told herself, “what a wonderful gift. She must really love the guy.”

  It was a beautiful brand-new red canoe with hand-woven seats. There were several prime spots around the immediate area to go boating, and Perrault loved nothing better than to spend his day off soaking up the sunshine in the great New England outdoors. He and Gilbert had even taken the canoe out several times right after she had given it to him.

  One day, however, as Glenn and his brother-in-law were driving by Gilbert’s apartment, they noticed something odd: Perrault’s car sitting in Gilbert’s parking lot with Glenn’s brother-in-law’s canoe strapped to the top of it.

  Someone had stolen the canoe out of Glenn’s backyard a few weeks before. It had been locked and chained under a large oak tree. It was unimaginable to think that one person could break the lock’s combination, carry a twenty-foot canoe up the slope, strap it to a car, and drive off without being seen.

  Even more peculiar was that Kristen, at the time, had been wearing a sling because of the injury she had purportedly sustained on February 17.

  Glenn confronted Kristen.

  “What the hell is your boyfriend doing with my brother’s canoe?” he asked.

  “I bought that canoe for Jim for his birthday, Glenn.”